Set or Add?

What do other GB users do with their regular fills: set or add? I have mine on Add right now because I wanted my paycheck to predictibly allocate. But now I’m wondering if Set would be more useful for my monthly expenses. If I spend less, it would automatically sweep the overflow into my savings envelope. Now I would have to do that manually. But maybe manual is better since it would give me more control. I’m interested to hear what other users do and why.

I personally choose to use add for all my envelopes. I like the control I have with this and many of my envelope amounts will vary month to month so if I have more in a given envelope than my budget that works good when I end up going over my budget in a particular month.

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I manually fill my Envelopes each month, rather than scheduling a fill, so I often do a mix of add and set. For example, I’ll often set my PG&E Envelope to match the new bill amount, or I’ll add the budgeted amount to Eating Out if there are leftovers from the previous month that I want to keep.

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I also use both, although I’m primarily a Set person. For my main categories (Dining Out, Entertainment, Fixed Expenses, Gas, Groceries, Household and Unforeseen) I Set my budget each month to the amount I’ve allocated to myself. I often go over in some categories, but I have enough buffer in Unallocated that it’s not a problem. For things like Petty Cash and of course savings I use Add so that those balances will accrue rather than reset.
I don’t use a “borrowing from next month” philosophy anymore because our Unallocated funds are well over a month’s budget now (thanks GoodBudget!!)

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I use Add for all of my envelopes so that I know I am filling them with a fixed about each month. Every couple of months, I’ll go through and transfer between envelopes if there are some that are too full or too empty. I’m noticing a pattern with a particular envelope, I’ll go and edit my budget.

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Becky’s method is exactly what I do :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for your responses. Becky, I like your technique. That’s what I’ll do for the time being. Hopefully soon I’ll have an unallocated cushion like Tiffany, and then I’ll switch to set.

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If I want to only use this for spedning money, and reset my bank balance each month to match my budget for the month, how would i do that? I’m not matching my actual bank balance, just changing in in goodbudget to the amount i allowcate myself to spend for the month.

If you want to be able to “borrow” from the next month or roll over any leftover money, use the Add function. If you just want to start with a specific amount each month, choose Set.
Since your bank balance isn’t important to you, you can ignore it and you’ll just have a very negative Unallocated and Account balance.
Hope that helps!